Financial derivatives are contracts of which the price/value of the contract varies with the value of an underlying instrument. The underlying instrument may be a bond, an equity, an interest rate, a currency exchange rate, commodity price or, in a recent development, even a credit risk.
Financial derivatives can either be standardised contracts traded on a recognised Exchange or OTC traded (see below). In the first case, one of the counterparties in a trade is an Exchange. As the contracts are standardised there is no difference between the net and gross outstanding volume for each market participant. Buying on day 1 and selling on day 2 leads to a total disengagement of the position. Futures and exchange-traded options are common instruments in this class.
As the prices of these instruments are objectively known at any point in time they can fulfill the function of “benchmark instruments” for the calibration of other prices. This “benchmark” function can as well be fulfilled by some liquid underlying instruments, like government bonds, stocks of companies with a sufficient high market capitalisation or frequently traded currency-pairs.
The other possibility is that the contracts are individually negotiated and tailor-made between two counterparties (so called “over the counter (OTC) transactions”). In this case entering into a contract on day 1 and entering into a similar contract with the opposite sign on day 2 may lead to a market risk position of close to zero, but still to 2 contracts which have to be maintained until their designated final maturity. Instruments in this class are swaps, swaptions, FRAs, caps, floors, FX-forwards, all kind of options on stocks, bonds, interest rates or currencies, as well as more exotic varieties and credit derivatives. Since the OTC contracts are individually negotiated, no objective market price exists. The parties need to do their own valuation of the contracts both when dealing as well as later on when establishing the market value of their contracts during their life. This valuation is normally based on pricing formulas using so-called valuation parameters for input. There are different models that can be used, depending on the preferences of a party. The valuation parameters are either estimated or derived from benchmark instruments using other theoretical models. This subjective method of establishing the value of a contract means that the parties do get to different results. The differences are small in simple products but can be quite substantial in more complex products.
Active players in these instruments may run books that comprised of tens of thousands of individual transactions (the largest dealers even have more than 200,000 outstanding contracts). The management of these positions is no longer possible on the level of the individual transactions, but only on an aggregated level. A common way of risk management is to sort the OTC-instruments by underlying instrument, and then express the market value and some risk-characteristics in time-buckets.
Frequently used risk-characteristics or sensitivities to the valuation parameters are for example the so-called Greeks: delta, gamma, vega and theta. Delta refers to the first differential from the value of the trade for a change in value of the underlying instrument, thus enabling the judging of the risk-content of the position expressed in units of the underlying instrument. Gamma refers to the second differential from the value of the trade for a change in value of the underlying instrument, or the change in delta for each subsequent change in the value of the underlying instrument. Gamma can be extremely non-linear, even for individual trades, and certainly for portfolios of many trades. Vega is the change in value of the instrument for a small change in the volatility of the instrument. Theta is the change in value of the instrument from one day to the next, all other parameters held constant. In case the contracts have a foreign currency component, the net present value of the foreign currency amount is sensitive to changes in the FX-rates. Hence, these net present values should also be considered a risk-characteristic. For derivatives where the main underlying is the interest rate for various time periods, (the so-called yield curve), the deltas are normally calculated referring to changes in interest rates in different time segments (or time buckets) of the yield curve.
Where the present application later on refers to the Greeks, all sensitivities to the valuation parameters should be included. The Greeks from individual trades can be aggregated for a portfolio of trades to form the corresponding Greeks of the portfolio. A set of trades is defined as being risk-neutral when the aggregated Greeks are close to zero. Hence, the aggregated value of a risk-neutral set of trades is quite insensitive to changes in the valuation parameters
The institutions active in the OTC markets use computer systems for storing the details of the transactions they have done. These systems normally have the capability to revalue all transactions and calculate the Greeks of all transactions on a unilateral basis. A normal procedure is also to do a daily mark-to-market, which means re-valuation of all transactions according to the prevailing market conditions. The mark-to-market values as of close of business are stored in databases for calculating profit and loss, risk exposure, credit exposure etc. The Greeks or the risk parameters can be calculated in different ways using different units or different scaling factors. Semantically, the risk parameters contain the same information although the numerical values may differ, depending on the methodology used by the risk-management system.
The professionally dealing participants in the OTC markets are banks, investment banks and other financial institutions (later referred to as dealers or market-makers). ISDA, the International Swap and Derivatives Association, has roughly 180 primary members and is a trade organisation for all organisations in some way active in the OTC derivatives market. A substantial number of these dealers consider themselves to be “market-makers” in a more or less broad spectrum of products. This means that they are always willing to put a price on a potential transaction that is brought to their attention by a customer or another dealer, be it direct or through a broker. In roughly 80% of the transactions both participants are dealers/market-makers. Only 20% of the transactions have an “end-user” as party to the agreement. The role of the market maker is to provide liquidity to the market. The motivation for the market maker is to deal OTC derivatives in high volumes, both “buying” and “selling”, making revenues out of the bid/offer spread.
The total outstanding volume of interest rate based OTC derivatives has passed the 60 TRILLION US$, the OTC market as a whole has a size of over 88 TRILLION US$ according to statistics as of December 1999 collected by the Bank for International Settlements.
The motivation for entering into an OTC derivative transaction is the management of market risk positions, either for the purpose of hedging (immunising a position from changes in market prices) or for the purpose of deliberate position taking (trying to make a profit from an expected change in market prices).
The advantage of derivatives is that the market risk of substantial amounts can change hands without the need to really transfer the underlying (nominal) values.
OTC derivative contracts can have maturities up to 30 or even 50 years but the majority of contracts traded are in the up to 10 years maturity range. The long maturity means that financial institutions (banks) active in this market build up large sets of live transactions. Holding these live transactions is associated with operational cost and operational risk.
The economic value of an individual contract can be several million dollars. An individual contract can also have a significant market risk meaning that the value can change several hundred thousand dollars during the course of a normal business day. Banks need to manage the aggregated market risk so that they don't accidentally run into trading losses.
Since banks are both buying and selling these types of contracts, the aggregated value and market risk of all transactions done by a bank are typically just a fraction of the gross value and market risk of the transactions. (With gross value it is meant the sum of the absolute values of the individual contracts). Still, in each bilateral relationship a bank will have either a net claim or a net debt. A claim is a credit exposure and as such is subject to capital sufficiency requirements imposed by the regulators. Hence, OTC derivatives trading also generates credit risk and capital costs.
Problems Related to the State of the Art
As explained above, the purpose of entering into an OTC transaction is the transfer of market risk, either to increase or decrease the total exposure to certain market parameters, depending on the preferences of the counterparties. As an unavoidable consequence however, the parties are getting a new exposure to two different risk categories, credit risk and operational risk.
As the market moves, the net present value of an transaction will move away from the roughly zero level at which the transaction was concluded. This means, one party gets a claim on the other party, the validity of the transfer of market risk is therefor always dependent on the ability of the parties to fulfill their obligations under the contract. It is of little use to have had the correct market view and get a claim of X on a counterparty that has gone bankrupt in the meantime. Therefore, an important factor in the development of the OTC markets has been the management of credit risk.
Originally, dealers calculated this credit risk as a percentage on each transaction (depending on the type of transaction and the maturity) and charged the so-calculated amounts against the credit risk limit their institutions were willing to expose themselves to each counterparty. Bank supervisors force banks to hold capital against both market risk as well as credit risk. Therefore each transaction or a certain sub-set of transactions, for example all transactions with counterparty X, will be internally charged with the cost of capital tied up in the transaction.
The total capital of the bank is a limited and scarce resource that effectively puts a limit on the volume of banking activities. It is therefore desirable for a bank to try to reduce the capital tied up by the unintentionally acquired credit risk in OTC derivatives.
As the market grew rapidly, it was soon discovered that the sum of all transactions between two counterparties was much less dependent on market changes than the sum of the individual transactions. Many active market participants are dealing back and forth with each other in both directions, sometimes even on a daily basis. This reduces the sensitivity of the portfolio: “all transactions with counterparty X” for changes in market values. For this reason more sophisticated institutions are now calculating the credit exposure based on the sum of all transactions with each counterparty.
This development has been made possible by the fact that ISDA developed the so-called “Master Agreement”, whereby all individual trades are deemed to be one Agreement, and many countries around the world changed their bankruptcy laws to accommodate this development (the so called “netting” process). The European Banking Federation has recently as well developed a Master-Agreement. The bilateral netting will, for the banks that are using this method, reduce the credit exposure. Still, many banks are not using netting, thus calculating exposures on a gross basis, or with a combination, i.e. they use netting in combination with a limited “add-on” for each individual trade.
The credit exposure can for obvious reasons never be netted between counterparties. A claim on party X can not be offset by a debt to party Y. The asymmetric nature of credit exposure means that the total exposure of a bank normally grows with the number of counterparties it is dealing with. The problem is aggravated if the exposures are calculated on a gross basis, since then the exposure even grows with the number of transactions.
In another attempt to prevent the exposure from growing outside the available limits of a bank, especially in the longer time buckets, which are the most risky and therefor the most scarce, counterparties agree on so-called “break-clauses”. This allows one or both parties to terminate the transaction at specified points in time at the prevailing market price.
A party may also choose to assign his part of a deal to a new party. In such an assignment, a deal between two parties A and B, where A assigns his part of the deal to a third party C, C will step in as the new counterparty towards B. By an assignment, both A, B and C can get reduced or increased exposure towards the other parties. The assignment requires the consent of both party B and C.
Even then a substantial number of potential trades could not be done, because counterparties were no longer willing to accept each other. Hence, the concept of “credit-mitigation” has been invented. In this process, when the net present value of all transactions exceeds a certain, bilateral set limit, their parties deliver securities or cash to each other, as a guaranty for their obligations under the contract. This process is called “collateralisation”. It does in no way eliminate or reduce the underlying reason for the unwanted credit exposure, it only mitigates the effect of the exposure. To establish the value of cash or securities one party has to transfer to the other party, parties have to agree on the value of the derivative contracts. This can either be done in a multiple of bilateral relationships, or through a central service. Cedel Bank in Luxembourg has provided this service. (See International patent application WO 97/03409, SAMPSON, “Method and system for providing credit support . . . ”). For several reasons, this service was not accepted by the marketplace and is for the moment discontinued. Whichever method is chosen, the collateralisation process incurs a lot of operational costs and operational risk, since the value of the credit exposure (the sum of the outstanding derivative contracts) and/or the value of the collateral may change in such a way that it no longer covers the credit exposure.
Another way of addressing the costs of OTC derivatives dealing is clearing. One example of this is a service called SwapClear provided by the London Clearing House. Counterparties that are members of a clearinghouse may choose to have the clearinghouse stepping in as the counterpart on both sides of the transaction. By doing this for several deals and counterparties, a clearing member can aggregate a lot of OTC derivative deals to the same counterpart and hence get an improved credit exposure netting effect. The clearinghouse is also calculating a settlement value on the cleared transactions in order to keep track of the net exposure towards their members. Any residual debt or claim is settled daily in cash on a margin account. Some clearinghouses have lately become exempt from capital charges according to the capital adequacy legislation in many countries. This means that the capital costs for cleared deals effectively become close to zero. Some clearinghouses also provide other administrative services where some of the operational costs and risks are reduced. The clearinghouses however do not clear all transactions under a master agreement. Hence, the netting arrangement under the master agreement is broken in two parts, one part that moves to the Clearing House, and another part that stays under the master agreement. This means that there will be a substantial, possibly even a higher, residual credit exposure under the master agreement.
Far from all OTC derivative market participants are members of a clearing house and it is only when both parties are members of the same clearinghouse that a deal can be cleared. When a clearinghouse steps in as the counterpart on both sides of the transaction, the number of outstanding deals is doubled. Even for cleared deals, there are substantial operational costs and risks associated with the number of outstanding deals, both within the clearing house as for its members. They still have to perform reconciliation of the tasks performed by the clearing house as well as other administrative tasks linked to the number of outstanding transactions and risk management
It is fair to say that both collateralisation and clearing are curing the symptoms of the problems and not the cause. The cause of the problems, be it unwanted credit risk or operational costs and risks, is the high number of outstanding bilateral contracts in such a size that the market risk of the sum of these contracts in many bilateral relationships is close to zero. However, so far there has been no efficient mechanism to make parties agree on the early termination of these unnecessary transactions.
If the aggregated Greeks of all transactions done between two counterparties are high, the credit exposure will vary a lot as the market is changing. This sensitivity to the market movements will cause problems in the sense that credit limits or collateral thresholds may involuntarily be exceeded and that collateral obligations may vary causing a lot of collateral transactions or large movements in the margin account at the clearing house. For this reason, it is desirable for the counterparties to reduce the aggregated Greeks in their bilateral transactions.
Operational risk can be defined as all risks an institution is exposed to, other than the intentionally accepted market and credit risk within the allowed limits of the bank. This includes, among others, unwanted market or credit risk as a consequence of staff errors (on purpose or by accident) or errors in the risk management systems, fraud by staff, customers or third parties, wrong valuation of transactions based on wrong parameter input, or mistakes in the maintenance of outstanding contracts during their lifetime (so-called fixings, settlements, assignments, exercises or payments).
Although the majority of transactions has a lifetime of up to 5 years, transactions of 30, 40 or even 50 years do occur as well. A trader or risk manager, who for some reason is using the wrong valuation parameters, may build up substantial losses over a long period of time. Smaller banks and certainly many end-users are lacking the possibility to do an independent mark-to-market of their outstanding contracts.
Many high profile mishaps have been published over the years, (even to the extent that some commentators were seeing all derivatives as “evil” instruments) and this should be considered only as the tip of the iceberg; only the low frequency/high impact accidents are getting publicity. The high-frequency/low-impact accidents, of which the total amount of damage may well exceed that of their published cousins, are frequently overlooked. Forced by these developments, as well as higher legal standards, market participants have invested a lot of effort, staff and systems to prevent accidents from happening. Procedures have been sharpened, internal regulations improved and rigid control measures established. The overhead cost of dealing has for this reason increased dramatically, and still accidents do happen from time to time.
The operational risk is a concern for the supervisors of the financial markets. There are proposals for introducing capital charges to cover operational risk. So far, the supervisors have not been able to work out principles or a model for how these capital charges will be calculated. The issue is still on the agenda though, and it is likely that any such model will generate capital costs that grow with the number of outstanding deals.
In addition to these new types of risks, the acquired market risk may well be according to the trader's intention. Still bank supervisors force the banks to hold capital against market risks as well. An individual transaction's contribution to the total market risk, for which capital must be held, can be quite complicated to calculate, especially when the banks are using so called proprietary models for these calculations. However, one method, accepted by the bank supervisors and used by many banks, is based on transforming all off-balance sheet items, e.g. OTC derivatives, into roughly equivalent on-balance sheet items to calculate the capital cost. In this case, it is possible to assign a capital cost to each individual transaction.
In summary, there is therefore an incentive for banks to try to reduce the costs and risks associated with the OTC derivatives portfolios they have build up. An apparent way of achieving this would be to terminate OTC transactions before their designated maturity, preferably in a way that reduces the bilateral credit exposure. However, in order to make an early termination the banks involved need to address several important issues that are summarised below:
Both the original counterparties need to agree to the early termination: it could very well be that one of the parties for certain internal reasons does not want to terminate a particular trade.
The counterparties need to establish that they are talking about the same trade: for every deal between party A and party B, party A stores his version of the trade and party B stores his “mirror image” version of the trade in their respective databases. Both parties typically assign their own internal trade identifier to their own version of the trade. There is in general no common identifier or any central register of the trade.
The counterparties need to agree on the value of the trade: since each OTC derivative contract is unique, there is no official valuation of a contract such as by a stock market. Each bank does its own valuation using its own choice of theoretical valuation model, where the model is based on certain inputs that are estimated by each bank. With this subjective method of establishing the value of the contract the parties (banks) normally don't agree on the exact value of any individual contract.
A bank does not want to change its market risk position: whenever a bank has an undesired market risk it does a hedge transaction to cover that risk. If a termination resulted in creating an undesired market risk position, the bank would need to make a hedge trade that would eliminate the advantage of doing the early termination.
A bank does not want to make a large cash payment: a bank with a debt to another party needs to pay out money in order to reduce or settle the debt. The debt arising in OTC derivatives is actually a form of cheap funding for a bank, which means that there is no incentive to repay the debt prematurely. Conversely, the bank with a claim carries the credit risk and also has the associated capital costs. This bank would then like to see that the other party to the contract repaid their debt early. This asymmetric benefit means that early terminations involving the large cash payments necessary for credit exposure reductions are perceived as being disadvantageous and normally do not happen.
A bank does not want to take the initiative for an early termination: since the value of the contract needs to be negotiated in an early termination, the party taking the initiative is at a disadvantage in this negotiation since they reveal their interest first. The other party can then require a valuation, which is in their favour.
All these issues explain why early terminations do not happen to the extent that is economically warranted. The situation is therefore summarised in FIG. 1 in that each bank (financial institution) 10 stores its own version of its trades (transactions) 12, each with its own identifiers (attributes) 14 and its own calculated market data 16. Each bank 10 has an ever-increasing list 18 of such transactions 12. The problem of massive build up of such OTC transactions 12 is becoming more and more significant.
An object of the present invention is to overcome at least some of the above-described problems.
Another object of the present invention is to provide the means necessary for solving each of the above-described issues both individually as well as simultaneously, which issues currently prevent massive early terminations of financial contracts such as OTC derivatives contracts.